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Archive for November 23rd, 2012

Anonymous Launched Attack

Hacking group Anonymous has recently started the attack it pledged for the 5th November. The group promised to target Australian government portals and big hitters like PayPal.

The hacktivists have embarked on a hacking spree which has threatened Facebook, NBC, PayPal and others. Local media reported that this spree was launched against systemic, global surveillance systems like TrapWire. The latter was the focus of a recent Wikileaks file drop earlier in 2012.

The experts point out that the vigilante-style nature of the hackers’ attack could be regarded by technologically un-savvy world governments as the event supposed to justify boosting surveillance and reducing civil liberties on the Internet, though that’s exactly what the hackers are fighting against.

The list of the companies allegedly victim to the attack includes ImageShack, PayPal, and Arcelor Mittal Steel. In addition, the Greek City website and the Ghana Consulate sites were also targeted, and VMware’s ESX Server Kernel source code leaked. In the meantime, an attack against antivirus software developer Symantec is believed to be unrelated.

PayPal has made an announcement, saying that the company is currently investigating the issue, but thus far there’s no evidence that account details of any user have been compromised. However, the @AnonymousPress Twitter account claimed the opposite and linked to a post on PrivatePaste (which has since been taken down). In the event that the hack did happen, PayPal will face around 28,000 details being compromised.

The allegations are part of the hacktivists’ day of action on the 5th of November to coincide with Guy Fawkes Night. The suspicions were that the hacking collective will manage to take down the largest social network in the world in response to the social-games spammer Zynga’s plans to lay off its workforce. Hackers were also outraged by company’s actions against numerous developers which they see as devastating to the gaming industry. Anonymous urged Zynga to change its mind or face the consequences.

Anonymous has endured despite multiple attempts from the United States to shut the collective down. They also plan to coincide a march on Parliament with the Internet activism. By the way, “V for Vendetta” author Alan Moore supports the movement and has even released a single in support of the Occupy and Anonymous actions.